: project | the undead empire

For about 76 years before Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Japan built a sprawling empire in Asia and the Pacific. Apart from the killing, pillage, exploitation, decimation and domination that goes with all modern empires, Japan also built cities and factories, hospitals and railroads, factories and hotels. It cut down forests, built dams and dug mines. Japanese soldiers, imperial managers, and settlers fell in love with, had sex and sometimes children with the locals. Once the atomic bombs were dropped and Tokyo surrendered, everybody figured that the Japanese Empire was pretty much over, and some of it is. But :the undead empire | reports from Japan’s colonies in Asia is here to show you that although the old empire might be gone in legal terms, bits and pieces of it keep on cooking and fuming and shaping things all over the places that once belonged to Japan.

: the undead empire | reports from Japan's colonies in Asia is a hybrid book and multimedia project bringing together 40 years of scholarship, travel, lived experience, field research, teaching and publication about and in Japan, its current imperial possessions in Hokkaido and Okinawa, and in its former colonies in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the western Pacific. It examines and reports on how Japan's empire in Asia between 1869 and 1945 persists in the 21st century, still shaping lives, politics, culture, and thinking. The website supports the book project. Publication of the undead empire book is slated for 2017. Discussions with videographers about development of an undead empire documentary are underway.